I was eleven years old living in a small town in a tiny house on a huge block that used to be outside the city limits. Before the land was annexed into town and dissected by city streets, it had hosted a cluster of family farms developed during the community’s founding in the early 1800s.
In anticipation of the arrival of my one and only sibling, my parents were adding a bedroom onto our house to upgrade it from tiny to small and allow the baby to have a room close to our parents. Currently this addition consisted of a hole in the ground awaiting the foundation to be poured.
It was the middle of one night during this time when it started. During the first event, I had fallen asleep facing my bedroom wall and was awakened by someone touching my shoulder. When I rolled over a woman quickly pulled her arm away, jumped backwards, and covered her mouth in alarm. She was neither an ordinary woman nor alone. Her figure was apparitional, wearing a prairie-style dress and a bonnet, and she stood next to a man who reached out to pull her tightly into his side. In front of the couple stood a boy of about eight who was leaning forward, presumably to get a better look at me. The man reached out his free hand and pulled the boy back by the straps of his overalls. And then they were gone.
The next night I was awakened by a low frequency sound. A hum of sorts what was less heard than perceived. Sitting up on the edge of my bed, there was a vibration moving through my body followed by a floating sensation as I seemed to rise. What happened next is difficult to explain. It was like I was moving upward through a series of sheets of paper only they were much more like planes of existence. Flipping through like a malfunctioning vertical hold on an old tube television set.
The motion began to slow and I could see I was moving through a series of scenes. When it stopped, I was floating upright, just above the ground, a vast prairie stretching in all directions around me. I began to feel like I was sinking.
Abruptly stopping again, I could see a farm in the distance and another house being built in front of me, a barn nearly complete nearby. I sank again and the house was complete, cows were grazing, a dog barked. It was in that moment that I realized I was moving through time, in a single place, the place where our house stood. I was able to turn in all directions, but only move forward and backward about ten feet. Though I soon discovered I was able to propel myself upward as much as I wanted to.
I moved toward the second story window of the farmhouse. Inside I saw the eight-year-old boy lying in bed, on his back, the blanket covering him neatly folded. The woman, who I now presumed was his mother, was shaking his shoulder and crying, the man had his arm around her waist. Perhaps sensing my presence, the woman looked up and straight into my eyes. It was then that I looked down and realized I was now the apparition, a ghost in her world. She pointed in my direction and seemed to be pleading with me as she cried. I began falling in a tumble, landing firmly back on my bed.
Thinking about all of this the next day, I considered talking to my parents, but realized they would just dismiss my adventures as an active imagination. Falling asleep was troublesome that night. I both wanted to revisit the family and feared something worse would happen. Eventually fatigue won.
The low rumble revisited and I once again found myself overlooking the prairie. I pushed upward to look around. There was a river flowing and a few campfires burning where the shops of the downtown existed in my time. The town’s lake was nowhere to be seen as the damn that formed it did not exist. Against my will, I began flipping downward through time.
The farmhouse was there again and the eight-year-old boy was riding his horse near the barn, using a stick like a polo mallet to knock the fluff off the heads of dandelions. I drifted nearby and the boy looked in my direction. He seemed unafraid and waved as he gave his horse a “Giddyap!” and sprinted around the corral that held the pigs.It was as the boy gave another dandelion a whack that the bee appeared and flew into the horse’s left nostril. The horse let out a fierce, high-pitched whinny and bucked, knocking the boy to the ground. I moved in closer to check on the boy as the horse, now standing over him, pitched upward as if to stomp. Reaching out, I managed to grab the horse’s reins and effortlessly keep his front legs in the air as I turned him toward the barn. The horse ran off bucking.
The boy sat up and blinked in my direction seemingly now startled by my presence. He screamed, but I couldn’t hear it, only the low rumble that had transported me here. The commotion with the horse had already caused his mother to come running out the back door, apron flying. She stopped and clutched her chest as she looked frantically between me and the boy. I could feel a sense of relief and joy spread throughout her entire body as she lifted the boy from the ground, surrounding him in a firm embrace. As I began to sink, she reached out and I could see her lips form the words, “thank you” as I began the tumble back to my bed.
I have no idea how I was allowed to travel through time to save the boy’s life, but it never happened again. Perhaps it was the disturbance in the earth caused by the addition project. Maybe I imagined it. Then one day shortly after my brother’s third birthday he came into my room late one night and shook me awake. “Thank you for saving me,” was all he said before padding off toward his room.